I think it’s super creative that you recorded the percussive sounds with household items! I was going to comment on how I thought the percussion really helped elevate the atmosphere of the piece! I think your other choice of instruments also works really well, since strings, piano, and mallets also stereotypically make me think of forest-like music. I was trying to figure out what the isolated piano figure was at the beginning and I realized it sounded like a bird call, and I thought was a clever addition to create the forest ambient sound musically and incorporate that into your composition. Great work and thank you for sharing!
Viewing post in Rookie Woods jam comments
You know, the bird call thing is a happy accident. The real idea I had was to just add something sparkly with a large registral span to maybe evoke a body of water like a river or a lake while remaining in an RPG-y atmospheric aesthetic. I thought it was also a nice constrast to the shaker sounds that precede it.
Also, wanted to say thank you for listening to my piece, but also for actively listening to others' pieces. I love that you're always in the comments, being positive and giving helpful advice to myself and the others! You clearly care a lot about giving this feedback and I'm sure it is appreciated by everyone here.
I think it works both ways! It’s great when a musical element can serve multiple purposes!
And I appreciate you noticing! I always learn so much from everyone else in these music jams and active listening helps me learn and grow as a composer too. People also like to hear how their music lands with the listener and I figure that I can help both myself and them by writing a comment with all of the things that I notice as I listen. I choose to focus on the positive because positive reinforcement of good techniques will last a long time and lead to expansion and growth of creativity whereas sometimes negative feedback discourages and leads more to limitations in creativity. I do think constructive feedback is extremely important, but it needs to be that - constructive, not destructive. It also must be specific, actionable, generalizable, and directed at the composer’s experience level. The other thing I’ve noticed about these jams is that while people want feedback on their music, often composers are putting out music in a published format (as opposed to WIPs) and hope that others like what they hear as you can’t really go back and change something in real time. I want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to hear what it is about their published project that works really well and show them appreciation for putting music out so that they keep doing it! I’ve been reading through the comments you have been leaving for others and I think you seem to share these mentalities and I also want to thank you for being a supportive member of this community as well! I’ve also been really happy that there seem to be many people who share these ideals in this community which makes me want to come back and do more of this! Anyway, my apologies for the length of this soap box moment and thank you for reading if you made it this far!